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Chell, _Portal_. Screenshot via Wikipedia.

There's so much to learn about harassment in video game culture--not only in-game but also AFK--that it's been very difficult to encapsulate in one article. So I'm breaking it into two parts. Part one, below, describes the problem of sexism in this not-so-niche geek culture and includes interviews from both female and male gamers. Part two discusses potential solutions.

WARNING: FOUL LANGUAGE

Shavaun Scott was stalked not once but twice by fellow gamers during her time in Lineage II. As an elf healer named Evanor, she offered her services to a knight and an orc at different times. She said, "They believed we were actually having a relationship. In both cases they'd get really angry if I played with other people instead of them. One called me a whore, or called Evanor a whore."

Scott isn't just a gamer. She's also a psychologist and the co-author of Game Addiction: The Experience and the Effects. So she is able to describe her experience as both a gamer and a professional psychotherapist: "It was interesting how I actually felt frightened, even though I knew the guy lived a couple of hundred miles away...it was the dynamic of the relationship he was trying to create."

According to vs247, there are 39 million active MMO gamers in the United States. Although many gamers play to immerse themselves in a different world, the most cited reason people play MMOs is to socialize with friends and potential friends. An estimated 40% of MMO videogamers are female (that number increases to 47% when you account for all videogames), and as some of them can tell you, these social interactions occasionally have negative consequences.

Online games have introduced single people to their future spouses and future careers, as well as have literally and figuratively saved people's lives. Best of all, MMO games, and online gaming in general, are a terrific way to meet fabulous people and kill them.

But a small percentage of players--I have no statistics, but most of the people I interviewed believe that sexual harassment comes from a vocal few--have made online gaming a difficult and unpleasant experience for female gamers.

Let's backtrack. Once upon a time, the world of videogames was clearly a male-dominated one. That overly hormonal male college student or the teenage boy in his mother's basement? Those were in fact the majority of gamers...over twenty years ago. To cater to this audience, videogame companies added sexualizedfemale characters. Scantily clad female characters were the norm--both in game and in real life, as seen by the "booth babes" hired for conventions to entice male gamers to their gaming booths.

Now that MMOs are peopled by women and men in relationships, the single male gamer is still the majority, but less than you might think, and Valve has proven that non-sexual female action heroes can star in award-winning and lucrative games. (Thanks, Portal!)

Still, many games companies have lagged behind the times (see Lollipop Chainsaw as an example of a sexualized female character). So have gamers, who believe that saying "Get out of the game and make me a sandwich" is an appropriate response to encountering a female player. In 2012.

Sadly, some female gamers have come to grudgingly accept this as par for the digital course.